


Insomniac ramblings

by Derien



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-07
Updated: 2004-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:35:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derien/pseuds/Derien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deb Lister's midnight musings about Arleen Rimmer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomniac ramblings

**Author's Note:**

> Background: Remember the alternate universe where Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer  
> had female counterparts? Remember that Deb and Dave did the nasty and Dave got  
> preggers, and the resultant twins boys, Jim and Bexley, aged too quickly and had  
> to be returned to their universe?
> 
> (the original publication date is a huge guess.)

Deb Lister lay awake, again, listening to the simulated sounds of breathing from  
the hologram in the bunk below. Not for the first time she wondered why breathing  
and sleeping were bothered with. Probably just to make the hologram feel more  
like a real person to themselves and to the others they lived and worked with.

Arleen Rimmer certainly sounded and acted real enough when she was awake, the  
obnoxious git. Well, usually obnoxious. She had her moments. When she  
occasionally opened up and talked about her past, her childhood especially, it  
became apparent that she'd grown up being buffeted by all the worst that humans  
had to offer - abused by her mother and sisters and given no affection by a cold,  
stern father. It was no wonder she'd learned the worst ways of interacting with  
people, as it was all she'd known. At 35, when she'd died, she hadn't seen much  
of the good side of life. Deb wondered if it wouldn't have been almost a relief  
to die if life was like that. How would she herself have felt about being brought  
back as a hologram? Maybe angry. Now even the option of suicide was blocked -  
Rimmer would have to convince the ship's computer, Hilly, to turn her off, and  
convincing Hil of anything was generally useless. Lister felt sorry for Arleen,  
now wandering like a lost soul, frozen for the rest of time as a broken, sad  
smeghead of a 35 year old spirit.

Because holograms really shouldn't be able to change at all - they were an image of  
a person made before they died, all their behaviour patterns encoded exactly as  
they had been. They shouldn't be able to grow as human beings.

But, Deb thought, Rimmer had changed. She had, of late, been growing slowly less  
obnoxious. Oh, not that she didn't say all the same sorts of things, just somehow  
Lister could tell that she really didn't mean them. The tone and the words were  
more a rote response, and her eyes pleaded with Deb to not take them to heart.

Her eyes. Deb rolled to her other side. Maybe this was not Rimmer changing, maybe  
it was that she'd opened up and talked with Lister on several occasions and Deb knew  
her better than she had. Deb knew how to read her eyes now. this was beginning to  
bother her. This whole train of thought, which occurred more and more often on her  
sleepless nights, lately, was really beginning to make her nervous. She'd done  
some youthful playing around with girls, but it hadn't been more than sexual fun,  
emotionless experimentation. She'd always preferred blokes. Okay, concentrate on  
that - blokes. Their giggly voices and the way they smelled sweet. She could barely  
remember how they smelled, really - she hadn't seen a bloke in so long. Three million  
years, actually, give or take a few years. Unless you counted the male version of  
herself, and she still couldn't believe she'd slept with him. He was a decent enough  
sort, but like a mate - pretty much like a girl, he was.

And now, two kids to show for it. Jim and Bexley were great kids, though a huge  
challenge, where their bodies had grown much more quickly than their minds could keep  
up. At least she hadn't had to deal with the diaper stage - thank heavens their father  
had taken care of that. Now it was up to her and Arleen to try to teach them to be  
proper young men. She could really give a shit less - let them run wild and be tomgirls,  
like their father, who was around to shock? Arleen still seemed to think they should  
know about such things, but Deb knew that all it would take was for them to bat their  
eyes at her and Arleen would let them do whatever they wanted. They'd already begun  
to catch on, and they'd only been here a few days. They were going to walk all over  
Arleen, and Deb could see how fond Arleen was of them, she could see it in  
her eyes.

Her eyes.... Lister rolled over again. This wasn't working, she needed a drink. She  
fumbled at the edge of the mattress for the flask she'd tucked there, and quietly  
screwed off the cap and took a sip. Maybe Hilly had adjusted the hologram's  
programming in some way so that she would be able to change. That would be good.  
Death would really be like a second chance for Rimmer, that way.

She felt comforted by that thought, and resolved to drink more rather than think about  
why. She'd nearly finished the flask before she felt she could safely put the cap on  
and lie back down with the hope of sleeping.


End file.
